The Sword of Straw (20 page)

“I don’t like you that much,” she said. “Sorry.”

She hitched her rucksack farther up her shoulder and hurried off, suddenly eager to get away from him. Now he, too, would be against her. But her brief glimpse into the shallows of his soul had filled her with panic. The sweet, sensitive persona she had created for him, burdened with unknown sorrows, had disappeared in the glare of reality, leaving an ordinary boy, with ordinary preoccupations—a boy who was hardly worth heartache and dreams, let alone scheming and spells. After all she had borne that day—for his sake, or so she told herself—it was too much. She fled home and shut herself in her room, gazing savagely at the cracked mirror.

She wanted to summon the spirit—the spirit who had lied to her and cheated her, exacting a price she never wished to pay for a spell that had turned sour on her. The bile in her was so strong, the memory of Lilliat’s true nature—the darkness behind the veil of flowers—barely daunted her. Without even knowing it, she felt the certainty of power, filling her, driving her, a force all destruction, without principle, incapable of good. “You said I would call you—” she spoke aloud, pushing herself on, sensing it was foolhardy, knowing it was pointless, but rage gave her the delusion of purpose. “I’m calling.” And now there were words in her head that she had never even read, tugging at the roots of the air, winging on the wind.
“Santò daiman, santò m¯ana, santò m¯ana maru! Venya! Fia! Vissari!”

Lilliat’s face hovered beneath the surface of the mirror, split in two by the crack, one side silver-eyed and silver-haired, the other all shadow. When she spoke, only half her mouth moved—the half in the light. Hazel fancied she was confused by the crack, and had simply forgotten to move the other half. Her voice came from within; any motion of her features was merely cosmetic.

“What of the spell?” she asked. “Are you content?”

“No!”

The phantom didn’t seem to understand. “I gave him to you, the one you love. I made him desire you. Isn’t that what you wanted?”

“
No!
He just
lusted
after me, because I was there, because he thought I was available. I wanted him to
care
.”
I wanted him to be special, the boy in my dreams, not a standard boring male with standard teenage hormones.
“I wanted him to
love
me.”

“He loves you.” Lilliat’s half face went cold. The dark side did not change. “Love is desire. Desire is love. What else is there?”

“You wouldn’t know. You’re stupid as well as a liar. It doesn’t matter, anyway. It was all for nothing. And now the others—Ellen and her friends—they despise me—everyone despises me—I’ve become the butt of the whole school. All thanks to you…”

“This Ellen—she’s the one the boy loved—the one whose token you gave me?”

“Yes. I hate her. I hate her—”

“Hate is good.” One end of Lilliat’s mouth remembered to smile. “Hate is desire. Desire is hate. What else is there?”

“Nothing else,” Hazel said. She was panting as if she had been running, breathless with the emotions that battered and pummeled at her spirit. Hate at least was clear, filling her with a dark burning glow, driving the doubts from her mind. It was easy to hate.

“I granted your wish,” Lilliat was saying. “The wish of your heart. But…”

“It’s usual to have three,” Hazel said defiantly. “I’ve read the stories.”

Lilliat laughed—half a laugh. The other side of her face was utterly still. “I cannot be dictated to by
stories
. I owe you nothing: remember that. But maybe—for the sake of your youth, for the sake of your power—I will give you another throw. What do you wish for this girl Ellen?”

“I want her to suffer. I want her to be scorned and reviled. I want her to
hurt
.”

“The wish of your heart?” The question sounded oddly significant, as if it meant more than it said.

“Your spells all go wrong,” Hazel said bitterly. “It won’t work, will it? They never work.”

And: “Yes. The wish of my heart.”

Afterward, she thought something changed inside her at those words: feeling became stone, her spirit set in a pattern that could not be undone. But really she knew that was mere self-dramatization, and the change sneaked up on her, moment by moment, stealing her soul, an atom at a time, turning it to dust.

The pale side of Lilliat’s reflection faded first, leaving the dark half somehow more defined, the single eye wide and staring against the waxy skin. There was hunger there, Hazel thought—the hunger she had seen before—and menace. It vanished in a swirl of hair, leaving the splintered glass beaded with water drops. Suddenly, Hazel remembered the head she had seen once, conjured by her great-grandmother, rising from a porcelain basin in the attic above. A white drowned head with eyes deep as the abyss, lifting itself from an inch of river water…

But there was no point in thinking of that now.
In any case,
Hazel told herself,
Lilliat is
my
conjuration, my familiar.
Effie Carlow was long gone.

She slept badly that night, troubled not by dreams but waking horrors, dreading school the next day. She wondered about confiding in Nathan, the following weekend, warming herself with his sympathy and partisanship. He would feel for her, he would champion her…he would be sorry for her. The thought of his pity gave her an inexplicable shrinking of the heart. After all, wasn’t pity the flip side of contempt? A looking-down on someone, an acknowledgment of their weakness and inferiority. Perhaps Nathan had always considered her inferior—less in cleverness, less in beauty, with no alien powers, no heroic qualities. Why give him the chance to confirm his superiority?

Besides, there was too much she couldn’t tell him. About the stupidity of her passion for Jonas (that was how she saw it now), and pocketing the soiled bandage, and conjuring Lilliat, and most of all about the third token, the rugger shirt—the token of her betrayal. “I’ll get it back,” Hazel vowed, trying to convince herself, to make herself feel better. “Anyway, she took it from me. I would never have given it to her. She took it.” Like Effie more than a year ago, who had made her take hair from Annie’s brush and something from Nathan, so she could weave a charm to spy on them. Nothing terrible had happened to them because of that, had it? Annie had fainted once—in London—but that was all. (Anyone could faint in London; the mere idea of it made Hazel swoon.) And even as sleep crept over her mind at last Hazel thought drowsily: “They’re all after Nathan.” Her great-grandmother…boys at his school…denizens of the spirit-world…

…all after Nathan.

I
t was midweek before Nathan was summoned for an audience with the abbot. “It’s getting to be a habit,” Ned Gable said. “What are you going to tell him?”

“I don’t know,” Nathan admitted. And, with a flicker of mischief: “It depends on what he asks me.”

But Father Crowley, as ever, seemed to know almost everything already.

“I fear it’s partly my fault,” he said. “I’ve known for a long time that Damon was dangerously unstable, but I hadn’t realized how close he’d come to genuine psychosis. I’m sorry, Nathan: you had an uncomfortable evening, and I might have prevented it.”

“It was a bit,” Nathan said, mesmerized by the understatement.

The abbot allowed himself a smile. “More than a bit. You showed great courage under conditions of ultimate stress. Life cannot ask more of anyone.” Nathan began to be embarrassed and, seeing that, Father Crowley moved on. “Afterward, too, you seem to have demonstrated amazing self-restraint. I gather you haven’t discussed the—er—gory details with your friends here, or made any demands for revenge or punishment. A more extreme reaction on your part would have been perfectly understandable, under the circumstances, yet you appear to have displayed a truly Christian spirit of forgiveness.”

There was the hint of a question in his voice and Nathan, reddening, responded to it. “It’s not like that,” he said, and then stopped. He couldn’t possibly take credit for a Christian spirit—the idea made him cringe—but the truth was too difficult to explain.

“Your mother, too—a forceful parent, on occasion—has shown an extraordinary degree of moderation. The Hackforths tell me she has rejected any form of compensation.”

“Mum isn’t very materialistic,” Nathan said, and then realized he was passing the responsibility for Christian spirit on to Annie, which was nearly as bad as accepting it himself. “The thing is, we—we didn’t feel it was really Damon’s fault.”

“No? Curious.”

There was an expectant silence. Nathan could hold out against physical torture, but not that. The abbot could do expectant silence with a patience and implacability that became, eventually, irresistible.

“He—he wasn’t himself.” Nathan struggled into speech. “When he kidnapped me—when he did those things to me—it was like he was—sort of—mad. Possessed. Not actually possessed, of course, but something like that. My uncle thought he must have been infected—influenced by someone.”

“Your uncle?”

“Uncle Barty. It was his house Damon wanted to rob.” He didn’t know if the abbot had heard about the Grail, and hesitated to mention it.

“Ah, yes. Mr.—Goodman, I believe.” Father Crowley appeared to consult a note on a pad at his elbow. “I didn’t realize he was a relative.”

“He’s not really,” Nathan said. “I just call him
Uncle.
He’s, like, a very special family friend. I’ve known him all my life.”

“I see. And he said Damon was—possessed? Of course, there are those in the church who still believe in the possibility of demonic possession, but it’s hardly in line with modern thought. Your uncle was naturally very upset; however—”

“Oh no.” In haste to prevent misunderstanding, Nathan interrupted rather brusquely. “Uncle Barty isn’t like that. He’s kind of unflappable. And he didn’t say possession, exactly. He says there are these spiritual bacteria, which can invade your mind, and—like—warp your whole personality. Someone like Hitler could do it to huge crowds of people while they listened to his speeches. These bacteria would get into their heads and stop them thinking clearly. Uncle Barty said that’s what happened with Damon.”

“Indeed. A most interesting theory. Did he talk to Damon much?”

“Yes, he—Yes.”

“Did he attempt to exorcise these—bacteria? Forgive me, I don’t know if I have the correct terminology. You wouldn’t exorcise bacteria, would you? Did he administer a spiritual antibiotic?”

“He wanted to help Damon,” Nathan said awkwardly.

“We all want that. Well, this has been quite fascinating, but I’m sure you have classes to attend. Amid all your other preoccupations, I trust you still find time for schoolwork. And…continue to exercise self-restraint, if you can. I must say, if you go on like this you may miss being a teenager altogether and emerge overnight into instant adulthood. Like Athene springing fully armed from the brain of Zeus.”

Nathan, slightly baffled by the gentle mockery in the abbot’s voice, was unsure if he was teasing or taunting. He stood up to leave, wondering if he had gotten off lightly, and having to remind himself that actually he hadn’t done anything wrong.

As if sensing his confusion, Father Crowley put out his hand. “Well done,” he said. “I mean it. The school has cause to be proud of you.”

It’s exactly like Harry Potter,
whispered an imp at the back of Nathan’s mind.
With the abbot as Dumbledore…

“I should like to meet your uncle sometime,” the abbot added.

Although there was no particular emphasis in his tone, Nathan had a feeling it was the most significant remark he had made.

I
T FELT
like an age since he had met the princess, though in reality it was less than a fortnight.
Term’s over soon,
Nathan thought,
then it’ll be easier.
He wouldn’t have to worry about arousing suspicion in the dormitory, and Annie, though she might get worked up about school bullying, had tended to accept his adventures in other worlds. Possibly she felt they were outside her remit.

Children had wandered into the past and explored the dimensions of magic since the days of E. Nesbitt and
Puck of Pook’s Hill,
or so Annie reasoned: it was a vital part of their experience. Children who stayed in the real world, smoking cigarettes and swearing and mimicking the grown-ups—they were the sad ones, deprived of imagination and the potential to grow. Of course, Nathan was hardly a child anymore, and his extracurricular activities were both more tangible, and more hazardous, than those of his predecessors. But it was better than shoplifting or binge drinking, or taking drugs or…the list of possibilities was endless. Annie had decided long before that alternative universes were a phenomenon she could take in her stride, if she had to, provided Nathan always told her—or Bartlemy—what was going on. And with that thought came the prickle of her conscience, the not-quite-comfortable reminder that she had a secret of her own, a secret she wouldn’t share. As always, she began to argue with herself, saying he didn’t have to know about his paternity, it would unsettle him, he needed security and stability—winning the debate but not the conflict. Her conscience still niggled her, in the small dark hours, murmuring, accusing.
You’re afraid,
she told herself, and she knew it was true. She was afraid of the power from beyond death that had used and abused her, afraid of its legacy in Nathan, of the doom she sensed or imagined lying ahead of him—the destiny that Bartlemy had said he was born to fulfill. If he didn’t know about it, it couldn’t happen—that was the questionable logic behind her thinking. And now he had met a princess.
Well, a princess should be a nice girl,
Annie thought, rather doubtfully. She reviewed the track record of various princesses, in fact and fiction, and was not particularly reassured. Still, every boy met a princess, sooner or later. It was inevitable.

At school, despite the risks, Nathan dreamed. His desire to see Nell was too strong, suborning his sleep; it couldn’t wait for the weekend or the holidays. The dream plucked him away out of his dormitory bed and deposited him in the kitchen at Carboneck. Daylight came through the windows, showing the smoke stains on the ceiling and the general drabness and grubbiness of everything. The princess was sitting at the table shelling peas. She started, dropping a couple of the peas, which rolled across the floor.

“It’s you,” she said, on an accusatory note. And then, rather tartly: “Nice of you to drop in.”

He had bent to retrieve the peas, which, in the way of dropped peas, had completely disappeared.

“I shouldn’t bother,” she said. “There are lots more. You’ll find them when you step on them.”

He grinned, pulled up a chair, and sat down beside her, joining in her task.

“I didn’t say you could do that,” she said, after a minute.

“I didn’t ask. Anyway, you should thank me. I’m helping you.”

“I don’t want your help!”

“Why are you so prickly?” he asked, studying her face, which was all little tensions and suppressed feeling. “I’m sorry I left so abruptly last time. That’s just the way it works. I don’t have a choice.”

She bit her lip—then emotion took over. “You’ve been gone so long! I’ve been
bursting
to talk to you—waiting and waiting—and you didn’t come, and you didn’t come—”

“It’s been less than two weeks.”

“Six!”

“Oh Lord, I forgot. Our time zones aren’t cotangent—”

“Aren’t
what
?”

“Time moves at a different pace in different worlds. I wanted to come sooner, but the dreams just happen. I don’t have much influence.” She was counting, he thought. She was counting the weeks. “I really am sorry.”

The princess digested this, evidently trying to find fault with it. To distract her, Nathan said: “Where did you get the peas? I thought you didn’t have much decent food here.”

“Granny Cleep grows them in her garden. They’re early
early
season. We don’t really know how she does it—nothing much grows here—but Frim says she has a magic touch.”

“Green fingers,” Nathan said, nodding. “Like my uncle. You know, in my world we have a story about a princess and a pea. She goes to bed on a huge pile of mattresses, with a single pea underneath, and she’s so delicate and princessly she can still feel it, so she can’t sleep properly.”

“Like I said,” Nell averred. “You find them when you tread on them. Or lie on them.”

“It’s a test,” Nathan explained. “To prove she’s a true princess.”

“Are you saying I’m not?”

“Don’t be idiotic,” Nathan said. “It’s just a story.”

“If I was that sensitive I’d never sleep at all,” the princess snapped. “My mattress has lumps, not peas. And the whole bed creaks every time I turn over. This palace is falling to bits.”

“I can see that.” Pointedly, Nathan glanced around the kitchen. “Still, you could at least clean up a bit.”

“We can’t get the staff.”

“You could do it yourself.” It was deliberate provocation, and he knew it.

“Prenders says princesses don’t do housework,” Nell said frostily. “
However,
you may have noticed I am shelling peas—”

“You’ve eaten half of them.”

“—so have you—and I also scrub floors, and wash clothes, and darn sheets.
You
try cleaning this kitchen. By the time you’ve gotten to the end of it, the beginning is dirty again. Prenders and I just gave up. For your information, being a true princess isn’t about bossing the servants, or having insomnia because there’s a vegetable under the bed. It’s about—about—”

“Staying here when it would be easier to leave?” Nathan suggested. “Standing by your subjects, and the people you love? Punching some poor twerp because he dares to kiss you?”

The anger fled from her face; a smile flickered in its stead. “I do my best,” she said, half deprecating, half defiant.

“So tell me about it.”

“About what?”

“Everything. Growing up here—the Urdemons—your father. If I’m going to help you fix things, I need to know more about what we have to fix.”

“
Are
we going to fix things?” the princess asked.

“We’ll try.”

“There’s a legend,” she said, “it’s in several books, but Frim says it’s older than the books, as old as the sword itself. One day a mysterious stranger will come—a prince, or a knight—and his heart will be so pure he’ll heal the king at a touch, and end the curse, and he’ll be the one man who can lift the sword and subdue the evil in it. Of course, we don’t know if my father’s the king in the legend. Most of his ancestors tried to wield the sword at some point in their lives, and it attacked them. Men never learn. Kings in Wilderslee have always been pretty unhealthy. Each one must’ve hoped the legend referred to him. But the curse has gotten much worse lately, with the demons and everything, so…”

“This prince,” Nathan said, “does he get to marry the princess as well?”

“Naturally.”

“It figures.”

“Are you—are you pure in heart?” she inquired doubtfully.

“No. I’m not a prince or a knight, either. I can’t heal your father at a touch and we’re going to have real problems with the sword. Apart from that—”

“You’re a mysterious stranger,” the princess pointed out. “One out of four isn’t bad. And mysterious strangers are in short supply around here.”

“I think we’d better forget about the legend,” Nathan decided. “We haven’t got the cast.”

“I must say,” Nell remarked, “you’re not dressed very…heroically.”

Nathan glanced down. Pajamas. “Night clothing,” he explained briefly. “I’m dreaming: remember? Never mind about that. You were going to tell me more about yourself—and Wilderslee.”

No girl—not even a true princess—can resist it when a boy she likes urges her to talk about herself. The peas were long shelled and still they sat talking while Nell, cautious at first, then more at ease, poured out feelings she didn’t know she had, all the turbulence and anger of her youth, the fears she tried to hide, the obstinacy that compelled her to hold on. She told Nathan about the mother she couldn’t remember (“My father died, too”), and how the king had wanted to marry again, a woman called Agnis famed for her black hair. “I must have liked her,” Nell said. “She was pretty, and kind to me. I didn’t have Prenders then; she came later. Anyway, there was another man who was in love with Agnis, some baron, and he insulted my father, and there was a quarrel, and that was when Papa picked up the sword. Afterward, Agnis still wished to marry him but he sent her away, he said he would come to her when he was cured. Only of course, he never was. I don’t know what happened to her. I was so little, I can’t remember any of it very well, but I know I cried and cried when she had gone. It must have been a couple of months later when Prenders arrived. Before, I’d gone around with the other children. Not just the Twymoors and the Yngleveres: there were lots of children in those days, running in and out of the palace. It was all different—bright-colored paintings, and toys to play with, and ice cream on special occasions. The icehouse is still there, but it hasn’t been used for years. The marsh was smaller, too, and in summer we would go on picnics, all the way to the woods.” She looked so wistful for a moment that it touched Nathan like a physical pain. “The Deepwoods are beautiful—the most beautiful in the world.” The glimmer of her smile came and went. “Perhaps in all worlds. I’d give anything to go there again.”